In a recent open letter to the ISO FreeCode CEO Geir Isene calls for standardization in the processes used by the ISO to help prevent future OOXML blunders. "It seems ISO is not prepared for a politicized process where a big and influential commercial enterprise will use any means possible to push its own standard through to certification. Committees are flooded by the vendor in support of the standard. Votes are bought and results are hijacked. Several national bodies have flawed and skewed procedures open for corruption."
Can't remember the details, but within the past few years a committee working on an IEEE standard caused so many complaints that IEEE disbanded the committee and started the process all over. It was also a case of suspected corporate tampering.
I have some second hand direct experience with ISO standardization as, when I was growing up my father was a member of several ISO committees. One was for example the X.500 standard. Hes told me many stories that would lead me to assure people that if they think hard core politics and vendor vested interests don't go on in ISO they are sadly, sadly mistaken. This kind of microsoft OOXML thing is really nothing that new. Its just been rather public. In true ISO style, what will now happen I think is they will now argue about it for the next 25 years. A final spec will come out and be ignored by everyone.
China accuses IEEE of wireless standards conspiracy
In its appeal, China has asked the ISO to investigate 'whether the ethical and procedural rules and principals have indeed been violated and whether the ballots have been unfairly influenced by those ethical and procedural violations,' according to the report in the Xinhua media agency.
for them to follow when creating a standard... the existing procedure is a massive hodge-podge of sub-committees and other groups which do not appear to be following a standard procedure for making their decisions...
I completely agree. They should begin forming a committee, with supporting sub-committees, to discuss forming the standard for creating standards immediately.
When I hear someone seriously propose standardizing the standardization process my first thought is that the level of bureaucracy has reached a point where its time to run for the hills. Thanks to prior standardization efforts I should still be reachable by cell...
how will they run the process for standardizing their standardization process without a standard process for processing standardization?
Argh, my head....
Are you sure you want to jump right into processing standardization with out a preliminary informal sit-down? Run a memo among your peers and see if you can leverage any useful synergies first. Then create an executive summary for review.
It seems ISO is not prepared for a politicized process where a big and influential commercial enterprise will use any means possible to push its own standard through to certification.
Whatever the merit of his suggestions, the idea that ISO is new to high-pressure corporate gamesmanship and requires a condescending lecture from a titan of industry like "the CEO of Freecode" has to qualify as the laugh of the day.
Whatever the merit of his suggestions, the idea that ISO is new to high-pressure corporate gamesmanship and requires a condescending lecture from a titan of industry like "the CEO of Freecode" has to qualify as the laugh of the day.
OTOH, it seems obvious that they need a scolding from somebody.
Whatever the merit of his suggestions, the idea that ISO is new to high-pressure corporate gamesmanship and requires a condescending lecture from a titan of industry like "the CEO of Freecode" has to qualify as the laugh of the day.
After Web 2.0; discussions on forums like Slashdot, Digg etc. have shown that they can be a powerful influence on individuals, companies and public entities. The recent admission by the Vista technical team of a design flaw that throttles network performance when playing audio
Whatever the merit of his suggestions, the idea that ISO is new to high-pressure corporate gamesmanship and requires a condescending lecture from a titan of industry like "the CEO of Freecode" has to qualify as the laugh of the day.
Hmmm... I always wanted to give a piece of my mind to NASA, every time they screw up, I thought "even *I* can handle fireworks twice each year, what's so god damn complex".
You know what, I'm gonna send them an open letter.
ISO is supposed to serve all of us, not just M$. You don't have to have a position in ISO to become affected by it. Also you don't have to be in ISO to want it to be free of corporate manipulations.
I'm a stakeholder. I pay money in form of tax which in turn is paid to support the ISO infrastructure. Also, the company i work for is member of our national standard body (which in turn is member of ISO).
Alright, I guess we should sit back and wait until Microsoft decides to clean up the ISO. Brilliant, sir. You are very, very well informed and surely not just some nay saying Slashdot cynic.
Man, that went right over your head. The parent isn't saying we should sit around, and isn't even criticizing Freecode's "CEO". It's saying that ISO is perfectly at home with political pressure, not exactly a virgin in the field, and Freecode's "CEO" doesn't carry a lot of weight anyway, not exactly being a "heavy hitte
Keep the process non-standardized. Make it organic and not a mechanical process. It is much easier to prevent an organic process from being gamed in that manner. If it was standardized, then there wouldn't be as good of an opportunity to reject obvious manipulations.
Wasn't Microsoft's current dominance of the market an organic process at the beginning? Do you really want that again? I would think that your suggestion would create another monoculture.
"Organic"? Can't we just leverage our synergies instead?
It is much easier to prevent an organic process from being gamed in that manner.
And when Microsoft can purchase votes at will, who is it, precisely, that you think would prevent it from being gamed? Some meta-level of benign dictators who can ignore the votes of the membership when they feel like it? Is that OK, as long as it's "organic"?
ATTEMPTS is the key word, is it not? The corrupted vote is null and void, and now Microsoft will have every action on that standard scrutinized heavily. So I don't really see what good adding an ungodly layer of bureaucracy will do. Standards take quite a while to move from proposal to final spec, there is ample process.
Do people really think they're all in there just winging it? There are already many rules, processes, procedures, etc. I don't even know what it means to "standardize the standardizatio
ATTEMPTS is the key word, is it not? The corrupted vote is null and void,
You're referring to the situation in Sweden, right? There's a lot more suspicious going on than just that one incident.
12 new countries joined the ISO OOXML committee this year. 10 of those voted yes.
Lots of new participants in the national standards boards. Most of which contributed little to the national reviews of the proposed standard and voted 'yes with no comments'.
I'll not claim outright fraud on MS' part, but if the 'if it quac
If true International consensus is to be achieved, then the criteria for adopting a submission as standard must be altered. The present criteria state:
1. Over 67% of P-grade members to vote Yes. 2. Less than 25% overall members could vote No.
The scope for abuse wiht the above criteria exists because 'countries' like Khazakstan, Cote' de Ivorie and Cyprus have equal voting rights; and can become P-members as well. So, the ISO could consider modifying the voting requirements on the lines of the Senate / House pattern:
1. The over 67% P-grade members criterion to be amended as "Positive votes corresponding to over 67% of the total population represented". Populous natins like India, China, the UK, Brazil have all voted No. The present ISO rules allow this popular opinion to be sidelined.
2. Secondly, lots of new 'countries' have opted for voting and P-status. None of these have participated or voted in any other sphere of the ISO actvities. This points strongly to financial inducements and corruption, and cannot be dismissed as coincidence. The rules must be altered before the BRM in February.
3. Thirdly, Microsoft has admitted to wrong-doing in the voting process in Sweden. This alone ought to be sufficient for the ISO to null and void the entire submission, and debar said firm for a minimum period. There is no credibility if rules are blindly applied, when benefitting parties themselves are guilty of subversion. This is similar to the submission of licenses to the OSI - the standards bodies must take into account past conduct and sincerity; not just rule on technicalities.
4. Fourthly, the "Yes, with comments" option must be removed. This is meaningless, and mischevous. What incentive does a vested interest have in listening to these comments, and redressing the grievances?
5. The ISO must take a clear stance wrt patents. Any patent-encumbered submission must be rejected until: a. The submission is amended so as to be patent-free b. The patents in question have expired all over the world.
The scope for abuse wiht the above criteria exists because 'countries' like Khazakstan, Cote' de Ivorie and Cyprus have equal voting rights
Why is this the case, when Côte d'Ivoire and Cyprus are run by little girls [google.com]?
The over 67% P-grade members criterion to be amended as "Positive votes corresponding to over 67% of the total population represented". Populous natins like India, China, the UK, Brazil have all voted No.
Wouldn't that just give China a plain old veto power? Perhaps we need both a House and a Senate.
The ISO must take a clear stance wrt patents. Any patent-encumbered submission must be rejected until:
a. The submission is amended so as to be patent-free
b. The patents in question have expired all over the world.
1. The over 67% P-grade members criterion to be amended as "Positive votes corresponding to over 67% of the total population represented". Populous natins like India, China, the UK, Brazil have all voted No. The present ISO rules allow this popular opinion to be sidelined.
I, for one, welcome our new standardized Mandarin overlords.
I don't think standardisation will help. On the contrary, a rigid well documented standardised procedure for approvals will make it far easier for a large corporation to understand the process and exploit or subvert it, with ISO then stuck in its own standards.
What's more important is transparency, that each member documents exactly the process by which it reached a particular decision, and that decisions within each member of ISO, not necessarily across members, are roughly consistent.
We don't necessarily need each country to standardize to what another country is doing. That might not fit with their culture. But if the process, whatever it is, was transparent, then we could minimize corruption.
"It seems ISO is not prepared for a politicized process where a big and influential commercial enterprise will use any means possible to push its own standard through to certification. Committees are flooded by the vendor in support of the standard. Votes are bought and results are hijacked. Several national bodies have flawed and skewed procedures open for corruption." --FreeCode CEO Geir Isene
How old is this CEO - 13? He sounds like a whiny little whatever.
How old is this CEO - 13? He sounds like a whiny little whatever.
More like 31.
Quote [isene.com]:"On the professional side: After 10 years as the CEO of the recruitment company U-MAN Norge AS, I moved on and started my own consulting company Creo Pario AS. I then started working for the leading Norwegian Linux company Linpro AS. From March 2003 till March 2004 I was the CEO. In the summer of 2004 I started my own company - FreeCode It is fully dedicated to free software. As of February 2006, we are 15 people and expanding quickly.
On the private side: I was born in Oslo, Norway in 1966. I have been a scientologist since 1984 (see my rather out-dated scientology home page). I am spiritual rather than materialistic. I believe in the good in people and that everyone can reach their potential. I believe that giving is more important than receiving and that being productive toward a constructive goal is what make people happy." (emphasis mine)
Any further comment — except this one — seems void.
All that is required is a oversite panel. At the first hint of something not exactly right the panel would have the athority to halt the proess and investigate the problem.
This coupled with the requirment of P contries to be active participents within the ISO would also go along way to preventing this method of abuse.
In addition say you have to be an active observer for 2 years before applying for P status or something like that and in order to maintain your P status you have to be an ongoing active participent in n% of the processes up for discussion.
From a developer point of view I'll parse any XML. If said corruption wins the day I'll being parse Microsoft Open XML with XML parsers otherwise I'll parse OpenDocument XML format with same XML parsers.
Hell, I'll even parse both formats or convert one into another with same XML parsers.
Your observation makes as much sense as saying that there is no point in standarizing document formats because in the end every format is reduced to bits, and those are already standard.
It's just the usual Microsoft doing "version 1.0" of "Influencing Standards Bodies" really badly. Wait till their 4th or 5th try at it.;)
Hardly anyone making new standards is really interested in the good of the industry much less the world.
In the past the geeks made TCP/IP etc because it was just a bunch of geeks who wanted to get things to _work_ and get stuff done.
Nowadays, it's "How can we influence the standard so we can get an advantage".
If someone actually comes up with a decent standard the competitors will just try to come up with something different.
Lots of crap standards nowadays - look at WiFi - they could have taken a leaf from SSL, and had a standard that allowed _secure_anonymous_ connections, but instead you get the huge mess that's WiFi- where it's easy to be open and insecure, and difficult to be secure.
Look at the upcoming HTML standards, all "throttles" and no "brakes", nobody _really_ cares about security. They just tell people to "please drive safely, and you should stay in your lane and not crash please raise a security exception instead", but do they really lift a finger to help?
AMD come up with Hyper Transport? No way is Intel going to support it.
And then there's RDRAM and the whole bunch of people trying to get their patents into standards.
Bribery, in any form, is counter to a constructive global economy. Allow no closed ISO Standards. That way, if some FUBAR'red ISO standard is allowed to exist; It can be ignored by the rest of us. As a side benefit, it would allow Darwinian Socialism to occur to rich fools.
I'm sure Microsoft will have ECMA recommend adoption of MSOOSI, the Microsoft Only OSI Stacking Initiative. I hear there are many new committee members and banana republics who want to add their completely unbiased vote on this completely fair and open standard.
IEEE as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IEEE as well (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Were you thinking of this?
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=9E6 A38B9-89B6-4C28-BD7D-B117D22E7C6D [cbronline.com]
China accuses IEEE of wireless standards conspiracy
In its appeal, China has asked the ISO to investigate 'whether the ethical and procedural rules and principals have indeed been violated and whether the ballots have been unfairly influenced by those ethical and procedural violations,' according to the report in the Xinhua media agency.
What we need is a standard (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What we need is a standard (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Standardized standardization? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Whao there.... (Score:3, Funny)
You don't understand ... (Score:2)
You gotta be kidding... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever the merit of his suggestions, the idea that ISO is new to high-pressure corporate gamesmanship and requires a condescending lecture from a titan of industry like "the CEO of Freecode" has to qualify as the laugh of the day.
Re: You gotta be kidding... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
After Web 2.0; discussions on forums like Slashdot, Digg etc. have shown that they can be a powerful influence on individuals, companies and public entities. The recent admission by the Vista technical team of a design flaw that throttles network performance when playing audio
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm... I always wanted to give a piece of my mind to NASA, every time they screw up, I thought "even *I* can handle fireworks twice each year, what's so god damn complex".
You know what, I'm gonna send them an open letter.
- CEO of my mom's basement.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
ISO is supposed to serve all of us (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ISO is supposed to serve all of us (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, the company i work for is member of our national standard body (which in turn is member of ISO).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Get a grip (Score:2)
Man, that went right over your head. The parent isn't saying we should sit around, and isn't even criticizing Freecode's "CEO". It's saying that ISO is perfectly at home with political pressure, not exactly a virgin in the field, and Freecode's "CEO" doesn't carry a lot of weight anyway, not exactly being a "heavy hitte
Re: (Score:2)
Just the opposite call may be a better idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm, maybe not. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And when Microsoft can purchase votes at will, who is it, precisely, that you think would prevent it from being gamed? Some meta-level of benign dictators who can ignore the votes of the membership when they feel like it? Is that OK, as long as it's "organic"?
Re: (Score:2)
Do people really think they're all in there just winging it? There are already many rules, processes, procedures, etc. I don't even know what it means to "standardize the standardizatio
Re: (Score:2)
You're referring to the situation in Sweden, right? There's a lot more suspicious going on than just that one incident.
12 new countries joined the ISO OOXML committee this year. 10 of those voted yes.
Lots of new participants in the national standards boards. Most of which contributed little to the national reviews of the proposed standard and voted 'yes with no comments'.
I'll not claim outright fraud on MS' part, but if the 'if it quac
First tho (Score:2)
It shouldn't be a big deal... it's a fairly standard problem.
ISO must introduce fairness as well... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Over 67% of P-grade members to vote Yes.
2. Less than 25% overall members could vote No.
The scope for abuse wiht the above criteria exists because 'countries' like Khazakstan, Cote' de Ivorie and Cyprus have equal voting rights; and can become P-members as well. So, the ISO could consider modifying the voting requirements on the lines of the Senate / House pattern:
1. The over 67% P-grade members criterion to be amended as "Positive votes corresponding to over 67% of the total population represented". Populous natins like India, China, the UK, Brazil have all voted No. The present ISO rules allow this popular opinion to be sidelined.
2. Secondly, lots of new 'countries' have opted for voting and P-status. None of these have participated or voted in any other sphere of the ISO actvities. This points strongly to financial inducements and corruption, and cannot be dismissed as coincidence. The rules must be altered before the BRM in February.
3. Thirdly, Microsoft has admitted to wrong-doing in the voting process in Sweden. This alone ought to be sufficient for the ISO to null and void the entire submission, and debar said firm for a minimum period. There is no credibility if rules are blindly applied, when benefitting parties themselves are guilty of subversion. This is similar to the submission of licenses to the OSI - the standards bodies must take into account past conduct and sincerity; not just rule on technicalities.
4. Fourthly, the "Yes, with comments" option must be removed. This is meaningless, and mischevous. What incentive does a vested interest have in listening to these comments, and redressing the grievances?
5. The ISO must take a clear stance wrt patents. Any patent-encumbered submission must be rejected until:
a. The submission is amended so as to be patent-free
b. The patents in question have expired all over the world.
More later.
Borat? (Score:4, Insightful)
a. The submission is amended so as to be patent-free
b. The patents in question have expired all over the world.
Parent
Re:ISO must introduce fairness as well... (Score:4, Insightful)
By population: Should Nigeria have more say than France on nuclear standards?
By economic power: Should the US have more say on kimchi than Korea? (yeah, I'm stretching there, but hopefully you get the point.)
By ISO membership: well, you're looking at the effect of that.
And so on.
It might just be a matter of selecting the least worst.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome our new standardized Mandarin overlords.
Re: (Score:2)
Please note that even if China, India and Brazil voted together, they would be well short of 67%.
Standardisation will make things worse (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think standardisation will help. On the contrary, a rigid well documented standardised procedure for approvals will make it far easier for a large corporation to understand the process and exploit or subvert it, with ISO then stuck in its own standards.
What's more important is transparency, that each member documents exactly the process by which it reached a particular decision, and that decisions within each member of ISO, not necessarily across members, are roughly consistent.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't necessarily need each country to standardize to what another country is doing. That might not fit with their culture. But if the process, whatever it is, was transparent, then we could minimize corruption.
Whiny little whatever (Score:2)
How old is this CEO - 13? He sounds like a whiny little whatever.
In any case, he's late to the party. Vendors ha
Re:Whiny little whatever (Score:5, Informative)
More like 31.
Quote [isene.com]:"On the professional side: After 10 years as the CEO of the recruitment company U-MAN Norge AS, I moved on and started my own consulting company Creo Pario AS. I then started working for the leading Norwegian Linux company Linpro AS. From March 2003 till March 2004 I was the CEO. In the summer of 2004 I started my own company - FreeCode It is fully dedicated to free software. As of February 2006, we are 15 people and expanding quickly.
On the private side: I was born in Oslo, Norway in 1966. I have been a scientologist since 1984 (see my rather out-dated scientology home page). I am spiritual rather than materialistic. I believe in the good in people and that everyone can reach their potential. I believe that giving is more important than receiving and that being productive toward a constructive goal is what make people happy." (emphasis mine)
Any further comment — except this one — seems void.
CC.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
2007 - 1966 = 41
Buyout? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey got an idea (Score:3, Funny)
2. Join ISO as a coting member
3. Say you will vote No with comments
4. ???
5. profit
Oversite Panel (Score:3, Interesting)
All that is required is a oversite panel. At the first hint of something not exactly right the panel would have the athority to halt the proess and investigate the problem.
This coupled with the requirment of P contries to be active participents within the ISO would also go along way to preventing this method of abuse.
In addition say you have to be an active observer for 2 years before applying for P status or something like that and in order to maintain your P status you have to be an ongoing active participent in n% of the processes up for discussion.
XML parsers are generic (Score:2)
Hell, I'll even parse both formats or convert one into another with same XML parsers.
Re: (Score:2)
Hah. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just the usual Microsoft doing "version 1.0" of "Influencing Standards Bodies" really badly. Wait till their 4th or 5th try at it.
Hardly anyone making new standards is really interested in the good of the industry much less the world.
In the past the geeks made TCP/IP etc because it was just a bunch of geeks who wanted to get things to _work_ and get stuff done.
Nowadays, it's "How can we influence the standard so we can get an advantage".
If someone actually comes up with a decent standard the competitors will just try to come up with something different.
Lots of crap standards nowadays - look at WiFi - they could have taken a leaf from SSL, and had a standard that allowed _secure_anonymous_ connections, but instead you get the huge mess that's WiFi- where it's easy to be open and insecure, and difficult to be secure.
Look at the upcoming HTML standards, all "throttles" and no "brakes", nobody _really_ cares about security. They just tell people to "please drive safely, and you should stay in your lane and not crash please raise a security exception instead", but do they really lift a finger to help?
AMD come up with Hyper Transport? No way is Intel going to support it.
And then there's RDRAM and the whole bunch of people trying to get their patents into standards.
A Possible Solution? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: calling for standardization in ISO (Score:5, Funny)
Then we'll need an ISO standard for creating ISO standards for creating ISO standards.
Then we'll need... I don't think we'll ever catch up.
Parent
Like RFC 2026? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
welcome (Score:2)
Then let us name it: (Score:5, Funny)
Parent